Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-12/tgmwc-12-116.09
Last-Modified: 2000/01/27

Q. We are not discussing war now. We are discussing the
extermination, the mass murder, of Jews by the National
Socialists. That is what we are discussing. Let me read on:-

  "When Adolf Hitler stepped before the German people 20
  years ago to submit to them the National Socialist
  demands which pointed the way into the future, he also
  made the promise which was to have the gravest
  repercussions, that of freeing the world from its Jewish
  tormentors. How wonderful it is to know that this great
  man and leader is also following up this promise with
  practical action. It will be the greatest deed in the
  history of mankind."

Do you say that you were not putting forward propaganda for
the policy of
mass extermination which the Nazi Government had set out to
do?

A. We too had freedom of the Press like democratic
countries. Every author could write about the forecast,
which perhaps later on turned out to be a fact, and that is
what I did.

Q. Very well.

A. But in my defence, Mr. Prosecutor, I want to be allowed
to say that wars too can be mass murder, with their bombs,
etc. And if it is proved that someone says that we were
forcing Hitler into war, then I can certainly say that a man
who knows that Hitler is being forced into war is a mass
murderer.

Q. With the permission of the Tribunal I am going to
interrupt you again because we are not discussing whether or
not Hitler was forced into war. We will leave that now.

Just let us go on and see if you are really speaking the
truth in saying that while you were writing these articles
you were not perfectly well aware of what was happening in
the Eastern Territories.

We got as far as January, 1943. I would like you to just
look at one or two more of the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt"
and see if you remember reading any of these.

Will you look at Page 30-b, 26 February, in your "B "
bundle?

  "Exchange reports from the Polish Government circles in
  London that Warsaw, Lvov, Lodz and other cities have been
  'liquidated,' and that nobody from the ghettos remains
  alive. The last investigations have ascertained that only
  about 650,000 Jews remain out of 2,800,000."

Listen to me. Did you read that? Do you remember it?

A. I don't know. For months - perhaps half a year - we
didn't get an issue, but if I had read it, I would not have
believed that either.

Q. Did you believe Hitler? If you will turn over the page to
31-b, did you

                                                  [Page 341]

believe Hitler? According to the last two lines quoted in
the
"Israelitisches Wochenblatt" of 5 March:-

  "Hitler, in his proclamation of 24 February, again
  proclaimed the extermination of the Jews in Europe as his
  goal."

Did you believe your own beloved Fuehrer when he was saying
the same things as the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt," the
United Nations, and "The Times" newspaper in London?

A. No. I declare that whoever got to know the Fuehrer's
deepest emotions and his soul, as I have personally, and
then later learns from his testament that he, in full
possession of his faculties, consciously gave the order for
mass extermination, is confronted with a riddle. I state
here ...

Q. We really do not want another long speech about the
Fuehrer. Just turn over the page and look at what is being
said on 26 March:-

  "The report of the Polish Government published in the
  English Press including:-
  
  'In the town of Vilna 50,000 Jews were murdered, in Rovno
  14,000 in Lvov half of the total Jewish population.'
  
  Many details are also given about the use of poison gas,
  as at Chelm, of electricity in Belzec, of the
  deportations from Warsaw, the surrounding of blocks of
  houses, and of the attacks with machine guns."

Did you read that one?

A. I do not know. However, shootings must have occurred, of
course, where Jews committed sabotage, etc. ... that is self
evident. During a war that is considered as a matter of
course. However, the figures which are quoted here are not
believable.

Q. Yes. I understand you to say that now, but what I do not
understand is what you meant when you said this morning that
the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt" made no mention of murders
and gave no figures. You didn't say that the figures were
unbelievable; you told this Tribunal, on your oath, that the
newspaper contained nothing except the hints of
disappearance, with no mention of figures. What did you mean
by that?

A. I have told the truth under oath, but it is possible that
one might not remember everything. During an interrogation
some time back I stated, based on memory, that an issue must
exist which mentions the disappearance of Jews, and so on.
It is in the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt." And I thought I
said that it was in 1943, and it is true. If one article
after the other is put before me - well, even if I had seen
it, how can I remember it? But that I, under oath, should
have deliberately told you an untruth, that is at any rate
not so.

Q. We will deal with the article you mention in 1933 in one
moment; but just before we do that, just see if you believe
your own staff. Turn, will you, to 38A, Document M-139. Now,
on 6 May it so happens just after those last three extracts
from the "Das Israelitisches Wochenblatt" we have looked at,
within two or three months, one or two months afterwards
your newspaper is publishing this article. It is headed
"Children of the Devil."

  "Der Sturmer paid a visit to the ghettos in the East. Der
  Sturmer sent its photographic reporter to various ghettos
  in the East; a member of Der Sturmer's staff is well
  acquainted with the Jews. Nothing can surprise him
  easily. But what our contributor saw in these ghettos was
  a unique experience for him. He wrote, 'What my eyes and
  my Leica camera saw here convinced me that the Jews are
  not human begins but children of the devil and the spawn
  of crime ... It is hard to see how it was possible that
  this scum of humanity was for centuries looked upon as
  God's chosen people by the non-Jews ... This satanic race
  really has no right to exist.'"

Now, you have heard of what was happening in the ghettos in
the East

                                                  [Page 342]

during 1942 and 1943. Are you really telling this Tribunal
that your photographer went with his camera to those ghettos
and found out nothing about the mass murder of Jews?

A. Yes, otherwise he would have reported to us about it.

Q. Warsaw ghetto, you remember, exterminated - wiped out -
in April, 1943. Your photographer must have been around just
about that time, if you were writing this on 6 May, if he
had just returned. Did you think he could have been there
looking at ghettos for Der Sturmer, for Julius Streicher,
the Jew-baiter, and have discovered nothing of what was
happening in the ghetto in Warsaw and elsewhere?

A. I can only remember that immediately after the end of the
Polish campaign a Viennese reporter went over there, made
films and made reports, in 1942. I would like to ask - is
there a name, a signature there to show by whom it was
written? One thing I know is that the ghetto was destroyed;
I read it in a summary - an illustrated report which I think
originated in the Ministry of Propaganda. But as to the
destruction of the ghetto during an uprising - well, I
consider that legal; from my point of view it was right. But
mass murders in the ghetto in Warsaw are something I never
heard of.

Q. Now, just let us look at the article to which you
referred a moment ago. Will you look at 44A of the document
book. My Lord, this is the same as was included at Page 53
in the original document book, it was Document 1965-PS,
Exhibit GB-176 but there is slightly more of the extract
quoted at Page 44A.

Now, I just want you to consider for the last time whether
or not you are speaking the truth in telling the Tribunal
that you did not know what was happening. You quote in that
article from the Swiss newspaper, "Das Israelitisches
Wochenblatt," of 27 August, 1943 - you will see that date,
my Lord, in the middle of the first paragraph - I start now
from that line in the middle. The Swiss Jewish newspaper
goes on to say:-

  "The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in
  England and of insignificant Jewish communities in a few
  neutral countries have, so to speak, disappeared. The
  Jewish reservoir of the East that was able to counter-
  balance the force of assimilation in the West no longer
  exists."

That is the end of your quotation from the newspaper, and
you go on to say:-
  
  "This is not a Jewish lie; it is really true that the
  Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe, and that
  the Jewish reservoir of the East from which the Jewish
  pestilence spread for centuries among the European
  nations has ceased to exist. If the Swiss newspaper
  wishes to affirm that the Jews did not expect this kind
  of development when they plunged the nations into the
  second world war, this is to be believed, but already at
  the beginning of the war the Fuehrer of the German nation
  prophesied the events that have taken place. He said that
  the second World War would consume those who had conjured
  it."

Now, are you really saying that when that article was
written you did not know how to interpret the word
"disappearance," the disappearance of the Jews from the
East? Are you really telling the Tribunal that?

A. Yes, the word "disappear" after all does not mean
extermination en masse. This deals with a quotation from the
"Israelitisches Wochenblatt" and is a repeated quotation of
what the Fuehrer had prophesied.

Q. Well, now, would you look at the article from which you
quote there, which you will find at Page 36B - and I would
like you to follow it and we will read together. Now, the
particular paragraph which I want to read with the
"Israelitisches Wochenblatt" is that quotation which I have
just read to you and you will find the same quotation, my
Lord; it starts at the end of the eighth but last line:-

  "The Jews were, or rather the Jews of Europe . . ."

                                                  [Page 343]

Have you got it in front of you, defendant?

A. I shall listen to you.

Q. It would be better, I think, if you followed it. I want
to help you as much as possible. Page 44A and 36B. I will
read slowly first of all from your Sturmer again: "The Jews
of Europe with the exception of those in England and of the
lesser Jewish communities in a few neutral countries have,
so to speak, disappeared," and you will see that you then go
on in the quotation and say "the Jewish reservoir of the
East which was able to counter-balance the force of
assimilation in the West no longer exists."

Now, would you look at that original article, "The Jews of
Europe" - this is 36B - "the Jews of Europe with the
exception of those in England and the lesser Jewish
communities in a few neutral countries have, so to speak,
disappeared."

Now - there you go on, "The Jewish reservoir of the East" -
the original goes on - "three million dead, the same number
outlawed, mentally and physically broken."

Are you telling this Tribunal now that on 27 August, or when
you read that article of 27 August, you didn't know that
Jews were being murdered in the East and that you had not
read of those things in the "Israelitisches Wochenblatt?"

A. Whether I had read it or not, I wouldn't have believed
it, that three million Jews had been killed. That is
something I wouldn't have believed, and that is why I left
it out, at any rate. Anyhow, the German censorship wouldn't
have allowed the spreading of something which isn't
credible.

THE PRESIDENT: You did not read the last part of the line,
did you?

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: "... were mentally and
physically broken. That is the result of the new order." I
am very much obliged to you. "That is the result," you say,
"of the new order in Europe."

Q. You say you did not believe it. Is that what you say now,
that you must have read it - must you not?

A. Yes.

Q. - but you just did not believe it, is that right?

A. No.

Q. Even if you did not believe it, when you were reading
this newspaper more or less regularly, when your camera-man
had been to the ghettos in the East, did you think it right
to go on week after week in your newspaper crying for the
extermination, murder, of the Jews?

A. That is not correct. It is not true that murder was
demanded week after week. And I repeat again, the sharpening
of our tone was the answer to the voice from America that
called for our mass murder in Germany - "an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth." If a Jew, Erich Kauffmann, demands
mass murders in Germany, then perhaps I, as an author, can
say that the Jews too should be exterminated. That is a
literary matter. But the mass murders had taken place a long
time before without our having known about them, and I state
here that if I had known what had in fact happened in the
East, then I wouldn't have used these quotations at all.

Q. But, defendant, you must have known then, must you not,
after reading that article, after sending your camera men,
after the United Nations published their declaration, after
Hitler's prophecies had been made again and again in his
proclamations, after you said, his prophecy had been
fulfilled - you really say you did not know?

A. The photographer is at your disposal. He is in Vienna,
and I ask to have him brought here. And I state that this
photographer reported nothing, and could not have reported
anything about mass murders.

THE PRESIDENT: I think we might adjourn now.

(A recess was taken.)

                                                  [Page 344]

DR. MARX: Mr. President, with the permission of the
Tribunal, and in the interest of clarification, I should
like to point out the following: The Prosecutor, Lieutenant
Colonel Griffith-Jones, has mentioned a document, Page 38A,
from "Der Sturmer" of 6 May, 1943. That seems to be an
error, because we are dealing here with "Der Sturmer" of 6
March, 1943.

That date is of great importance because if the cameraman of
"Der Sturmer" published a report of 6 March in "Der Sturmer,
" then he must have been at the ghetto in Warsaw before 6
March, 1943.

THE PRESIDENT: Why do you say 6 March? The document I have
before me has 6 May.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: There has been a mistake,
I am afraid, in the German that Dr. Marx has. I have the
original before me, which is 6 May, 1943.

DR. MARX: Excuse me. At the present moment I cannot recall
when the destruction of the ghetto of Warsaw took place.
That was Document 1061-PS.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GRIFFITH-JONES: I cannot remember for the
moment the number of the document, but the date was, I think
from memory, from 1 to 23 April.

DR. MARX: Then, of course, my remark is without foundation.
Please excuse me.

Q. Now we had just dealt with the "Israelitisches
Wochenblatt," issue for 27 August, the copy that you quoted
from. I just refer you to one more copy of that newspaper.
Would you look at Page 37-B, which is an issue of 10
September, 1943:-

  "Statistics presented by the Convening Committee showed
  that five millions out of the eight and a half million
  Jews of Europe had died or been deported ... About three
  million Jews had lost their lives through forced labour
  and deportation."
  
Did you read that one?

A. I do not know, and again I would not have believed it. To
this day I do not believe that five million were killed. I
consider it technically impossible that that could have
happened. I do not believe it. I have not received proof of
that up until now.

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